Ares left the military support position before the first gray shift of dawn.
The weight of the crossbow rested flat against his spine, the bolt loaded, the string drawn taut.
His left hand kept its grip around the metal spear.
He moved south toward the ruins of the old camp the place that had once belonged to the group that had cast him out.
He did not go to seek them, nor to return to what had been broken.
He went because the ruins sat on the border where the forest surrendered to the crushed asphalt of the old suburban sprawl.
When the perimeter wall of the old camp appeared through the mist, Ares slowed.
He stood behind the heavy trunk of a dead oak, his breathing flat, his pulse steady in his throat.
His body was still unfamiliar.
Every movement carried more raw weight than he expected.
His shoulders sat broader, his chest held a heavy solidity, and his legs pushed against the ground with an unyielding pressure that required constant control.
The lingering drag of hunger that had plagued him for months was gone; his muscles no longer carried the weakness that scarce rations had left behind.
The wooden gates had been dragged off their hinges.
Deep scorch marks ran up the remaining concrete posts, black soot fanning outward where fuel had burned against the stone.
The makeshift watchtowers were empty frame-timber, snapped like dry bones.
Clothes hung frozen on the rusted wire fence.
A plastic bucket, cracked down the center, turned slowly in the light wind.
Ares watched the silence.
His altered vision picked apart the shadows inside the courtyard.
A broken handcart.
A child’s boot buried in wet dirt.
A streak of brown against the stone wall where someone had tried to drag themselves toward the well before being stopped.
There were no bodies left in the open.
The flesh-eaters had passed through.
They had taken what was usable, cleared the ground, and moved on.
Ares turned his face away from the gate and looked into the thick undergrowth that swallowed the southern road.
He tilted his head and closed his eyes.
The wind in the canopy above was a low, constant roar.
Below it, the wet drip of water from leaf to moss.
Beyond that a mile into the dense pine a sound that did not belong to the trees.
A bootsole scraping against wet root.
A buckle snapping closed.
The sharp, wet tear of cloth being pulled through thorn bushes.
Ares opened his eyes.
He stepped away from the oak and sank into the high grass of the forest floor, moving toward the sound.
The power in his legs let him move faster without losing balance or making a sound.
His long strides carried him from one patch of heavy cover to the next without slowing.
The soles of his field boots came down heel-to-toe, precise and heavy, yet silent against the wet pine needles.
The spear moved parallel to his hip, cleared of the low branches.
The trail became clear within twenty minutes.
Four sets of tracks cut through the mud.
Two walked with heavy, even strides, deep heel-prints indicating heavy boots and full gear.
The other two dragged their feet.
Small strides.
Toe-heavy.
Slumping weight.
He found them at the edge of a shallow ravine where a stream had cut through the clay.
Ares climbed into the lower branches of a massive spruce, the thick needles wrapping around his dark jacket.
He looked down through the green cover.
Two men stood near the water.
They wore coats made of mismatched hides stitched together with heavy cord, their faces smeared with dark grease to cut the reflection of the morning light.
Both carried long, iron-tipped pikes strapped across their backs and short, heavy butcher knives at their belts.
In front of them, bound together at the wrists with thick natural rope, were two people from his old camp.
Ares recognized the younger one first Eli, a boy who used to haul water for the perimeter watch.
His face was swollen, one eye closed under a blue-black mound of bruised skin.
The stranger beside him was a man named Vane, who had been one of the camp’s primary hunters.
Vane’s left leg hung at an unnatural angle, the knee blown outward, the fabric of his trousers soaked through with dark blood.
“Move the leg,” one of the captors growled, kicking Vane in the ribs with the steel toe of his boot.
“We aren’t carrying two hundred pounds of useless meat through the draw.”
Vane gasped, a wet sound that ended in a cough.
“I can’t…
the joint is gone…”
“Then you’ll crawl when we hit the open,” the captor said.
“The camp doesn’t like dead weight.
If you die before we reach the kitchen, the skin goes bad before we can salt it.”
Eli tried to pull Vane up by his shoulder, his teeth gritted.
“Get up, Vane.
Please.
Just get up.”
“Shut up,” the second captor snapped, striking Eli across the side of the head with the butt of his pike.
Eli collapsed onto his knees.
“Save your breath for the climb.”
Above them, hidden in the dark foliage, Ares watched without moving a muscle.
He saw how it had happened.
Vane and Eli had been out hunting.
Vane had stepped into a pitfall trap hidden in the draw, and Eli had refused to leave him behind.
The two flesh-eaters had been checking the trap line, found them trapped in the dirt, and bound them together.
Ares’s left hand tightened on the metal shaft of his spear.
He could drop from the tree now.
He could drive the spear through the first captor’s throat before the man could clear his pike, pull the crossbow from his back, and kill the second before he turned.
He did not move.
Saving two broken survivors meant nothing if the main lair remained untouched.
Two men on a trap line meant a main camp nearby.
A supply point.
A center where the rest of them gathered.
Ares stayed in the tree as the captors hauled Vane to his feet and forced the two prisoners forward down the rocky bed of the draw.
He followed from the high ground.
He stayed two hundred yards behind them, tracking the sound of Vane’s dragging foot and the rough orders of the guards.
The terrain shifted from deep timber to the cracked concrete of an old commercial district.
Nature had tried to reclaim it, but the buildings were larger here—multi-story structures of reinforced brick and poured stone.
After two hours of tracking, the forest ended at the edge of a wide, paved plaza.
On the far side of the plaza stood a structure that dominated the skyline.
It had been an upmarket hotel before the fall an eight-story curve of gray stone, decorative glass, and wide archways.
Most of the glass in the upper floor windows had been shattered, replaced by heavy wooden shutters or sheets of corrugated iron.
The main entrance was blocked by a double layer of iron spikes sharpened rebar welded together into crude chevaux-de-frise.
Ares watched from the third-story window of an abandoned office building across the plaza.
He lay flat on the dust-covered floor, his spear resting beside his shoulder, peering through a gap in the masonry.
He opened a small leather-bound manual he had pulled from his pack a scavenged tactical survey notebook.
He flipped through the pages.
He closed the book.
The diagrams remained in his head.
He could see every position, every angle, every marked point as clearly as if the page were still open in front of him.
Across the plaza, the two captors dragged Eli and Vane toward a small side door near the service loading bay of the hotel.
A heavy iron plate slid back from a viewing slit.
A brief exchange of words followed, and the door swung open, swallowing the four men before slamming shut with a heavy iron thud.
Ares did not rush.
He spent the remaining daylight mapping the hotel with his eyes and ears.
The building was a fortress.
The ground floor windows were bricked up from the inside.
The primary courtyard was fenced off with chicken wire reinforced with barbed wire taken from military posts.
Through the gaps in the third-floor wooden shutters of the hotel, he saw movement.
It was a full community.
He saw women carrying iron pots.
He saw men cleaning rifles and sharpening long cleavers.
And in the central atrium visible through a large section of collapsed roof he saw the cages.
Iron bars, salvaged from bank vaults and security gates, had been anchored into the concrete floor of the ground-floor lobby.
Inside the cages were people.
Ares narrowed his eyes, his vision adjusting to the deep shadows of the lobby.
There were at least fifteen prisoners held in four separate enclosures.
Some sat with their knees pulled to their chests; others lay motionless on the cold stone.
They were bare-chested, dirty, their bodies thin to the point of rib-lines showing through skin.
Eli and Vane were dragged into the lobby and shoved into the smallest of the cages.
Vane collapsed against the bars and did not move again.
Ares shifted his weight on the office floor.
His mind worked through the layout.
No guards in the courtyard.
That was the first detail that registered as wrong.
He watched the perimeter for two hours after nightfall.
The moon was a thin sliver behind heavy rain clouds, offering almost no light.
The plaza was dark as a grave.
Yet, no sentries walked the roof edge.
No guards stood by the service door.
No one patrolled the ground around the cages in the atrium.
The occupants of the hotel had gone to the upper floors.
He could hear them above voices, the clatter of metal bowls, the heavy thump of furniture being moved.
But the ground level was abandoned to the dark.
The thought lingered, but it did not stop him.
Ares left his crossbow in the office building.
It was too bulky for tight indoor corridors.
He kept the spear in his left hand and a twelve-inch military combat knife tucked into his left belt-loop.
He crossed the plaza like a shadow over water.
He did not use the doors.
He climbed the drainpipe on the eastern wall of the hotel, his large hands gripping the rusted iron brackets with absolute control.
He reached a second-floor window where the iron bars had rusted through at the sill.
He pulled the iron groaned softly, then snapped under the quiet, steady pressure of his shoulder.
He slipped inside.
The air inside smelled of old damp, stale grease, and dried blood.
He dropped down the ruined staircase into the main courtyard archway, his boots silent against the ash and cracked marble.
Before him stood one of the senior camp guards a man named Garrow, who had worked the perimeter fence back when the old camp still functioned.
Garrow held an iron pikeshaft low across his waist, his face smeared with dark grease against the rain.
“You look familiar,” Garrow said.
His voice was low, cautious.
Ares said nothing.
He kept the metal spear resting flat against his left hip, his face motionless in the shadow of his hood.
Garrow studied him.
The broader shoulders.
The darker, longer hair falling past his collar.
The altered, heavy line of the jaw under the grease and dirt.
Nothing matched the memory of the man he had known.
Garrow took a step closer, his knuckles tightening on his pike, his brow furrowed in confusion.
Then his gaze stopped on Ares’s right eye specifically the iris, where three tiny dark specks sat in a tight, precise triangle.
“Wait…” Garrow breathed, taking half a step back.
His eyes widened slightly as the detail locked into place.
“No.
That can’t be”
BANG.
There was no sound of a trigger pull.
No warning wind.
The round came from high up in the ruined clocktower behind the main archway.
The bullet struck Ares from behind.
It punched straight through the muscle below his right shoulder blade, tore through tissue, and blasted out beneath his right collarbone in a sudden, violent spray of red.
The impact slammed Ares forward a full step.
Garrow staggered back, his jaw open in shock as hot blood splashed across his boots and the stone between them.
Ares didn’t speak.
He didn’t scream.
A heavy, dark stream immediately flooded down the front of his jacket, dripping rapidly onto his boots and the marble floor.
His right arm dropped dead at his side.
His fingers opened.
The spear slipped from his hand.
Ares caught the shaft with his left hand before it hit the ground.
The bullet had gone straight through.
He didn’t freeze to think about it.
He touched the exit wound below his collarbone with two fingers of his left hand.
They came away slick and bright red.
Blood squirted between his fingers as he pressed down.
CRACK.
A second round shattered the marble where his left heel had been an instant before, spraying sharp stone chips into the air.
He didn’t look for the muzzle flash.
He didn’t know how many shooters were watching the courtyard.
One was enough.
He dropped his center of gravity low and lunged sideways behind a fallen concrete pillar.
“HE’S HIT!” Garrow yelled from behind the cover of the main gate, his voice cracking.
“COVER THE RUNWAY!”
Shouts erupted from the upper balconies.
Heavy boots pounded against the iron fire escapes above.
Two men with axes burst out of the side hallway, while the high marksman cycled the bolt of his rifle with a loud, mechanical clack-clack.
Ares lay flat against the wet concrete behind the pillar.
Blood ran continuously down his back, soaking his trousers.
His right arm was cold, numb, and heavy like dead wood hanging from his shoulder.
Inside the atrium cages beyond the corridor, mechanical latches released with a sharp, rhythmic clack-clack-clack.
The captives had been bait.
The ground floor was a trap.
“ARES!
HELP US!” Eli’s shriek echoed from the cages, swallowed instantly by the roaring shouts of the hunting party above.
“DON’T LEAVE US!”
Ares didn’t answer.
He couldn’t go back into the open.
He gripped the center of the spear tightly in his left hand, his thumb braced along the cold iron shaft.
The first pursuer lunged around the pillar, swinging a heavy iron cleaver toward his throat.
Ares didn’t block.
With his right arm hanging limp and bleeding at his side, he planted his feet and drove a devastating left-handed thrust with the spear directly into the attacker’s chest.
The metal tip punched through bone and iron plate, driving the man backward five feet until he slammed limp against the masonry wall.
Ares yanked the blade free with his left arm, blood spraying across his chest.
CRACK.
A third high-caliber shot tore through the air, smashing into the stone an inch from his hip and spraying sharp grit into his wound.
Ares moved immediately.
He ran low, his body weaving in erratic, unpredictable angles.
Blood poured from both shoulder wounds, splashing against the ruined walls as he moved, leaving a bright red trail through the corridors.
Two guards carrying wooden riot shields blocked the narrow service exit ahead.
Ares didn’t slow.
Thrusting all his weight onto his legs, he launched himself forward, driving the blunt iron butt of the spear held exclusively in his left grip straight into the center of the interlocked shields.
The wood exploded into splinters under his momentum.
Both guards collapsed back into the mud outside, their arms snapping under the impact.
Ares hit the gravel, rolled over his left shoulder, and hit his feet without losing pace.
Rain was falling in freezing, heavy sheets across the plaza.
It struck his face, immediately washing the dark blood from his cheek and chest into pink streams against his jacket.
CRACK.
Another bullet smashed into the asphalt behind his heels, throwing up wet grit.
He cut hard to the left, darted behind a rusted bus frame, and ducked into a narrow, dark alleyway.
His boots made no sound against the wet asphalt, but behind him, every step left a dark crimson smear washed away by the torrents of rain.
He ran three blocks without stopping, twisting through abandoned foundation walls until the shouts of the hotel vanished into the storm.
Ares slipped through the broken ground window of an abandoned cellar and collapsed against the far concrete wall.
He sat in the pitch black.
His breathing was heavy, a tight, rattling sound in his chest.
His right arm lay completely limp on the floor beside him, unfeeling, dark red blood pooling beneath the motionless fingers and soaking into the dust.
He raised his left hand and pressed his fingers hard against the exit wound beneath his collarbone.
Blood squirted between his fingers before his grip tightened, compressing the torn muscle against the bone.
He looked down at his useless arm in the dark.
His fingers came away slick and red.
The blood was still coming.
The new strength was real.
The speed was real.
But the lead had gone straight through him all the same.
He could survive the wound, but he would not survive another in the wrong place.
He sat in the dark, one hand pressed against the wound.
The hunters would search for him.
Ares listened to the rain.
Then he reached for the spear.